1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a biometric authentication system and a biometric authentication method.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the related art, a plurality of registering information is registered in the memory and the like, and whether the person who input the information that matches the registered registering information is the registered person is searched as in a system for managing entering/exit of a certain location, and the like. In this case, a so-called “one to N authentication” in which the input information to be authenticated is matched with each of a plurality of registering information registered in the memory and the like is performed.
In the one to N authentication, N in the one to N authentication is less likely to be a large number in a case of a system using one sensor such as in security application of an information appliances such as a personal computer and a portable telephone, and a managing of entering and exiting to a small-scale office, and the length of the authentication time does not become an issue.
For instance, in the entering and exiting control, the office where a few dozen people are working can be sufficiently responded even under a setting where only one person can simultaneously enter and exit the room using one sensor installed outside the door. In entering and exiting, the registered person inputs a biological image such as his/her finger vein image, fingerprint image, face image, and iris image. The computer installed in the office performs the one to N authentication between all registered data being held and the input data, and determines whether or not to allow entering to the room. If the number N of registered person is few, the number of data to compare is small, and thus the authentication process can be easily executed without keeping the registered person waiting. In the case of the notebook-sized personal computer, the portable telephone, and the like, the one to N authentication can be executed without affecting the convenience of the registered person by having the user register a plurality of fingers in advance in the case such as the vein authentication and the fingerprint authentication.
However, if a large-scale biometric authentication system is necessary, the N of the one to N authentication becomes large, and the authentication time for one input becomes enormously long. Furthermore, if offices are on plural floors in the same building, a plurality of sensors is installed and the authentication process is sometimes performed with respect to plural people simultaneously or within a very small time. Thus, if the data of all registered person is managed with one device, the authentication time with respect to one person becomes long and the queue with long authentication process wait occurs. This is not a preferable state for both the registered person entering and exiting the room and for the entire system.
In such system, image data referred to as a template is used for the registering information, and the authentication time can be shortened if the speed of the matching process of comparing such template and the input information can be increased. In Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2004-362186 described below, a method (so-called one-dimensional parallelization of parallelizing in the direction of number of jobs) of dividing the matching process into a number of jobs and sequentially parallel processing the divided jobs is disclosed to shorten the time for the matching process.